■④ Awesome Daily Bonuses
2x King appearance rates for the Metal/Gold and Jewel Dragons
[We will also have a special visits from the Super King Dragons - (including an invasion from one of the Jeweled Super Kings)]
2x Drops for special daily Dungeons
2x Coins for the Weekend Tricolor Dungeon (normally just 1.5x)
2x Skill Up rate
King Metal/Jewel Dragons at the Pal Egg Machine

Tips for first time PADers
1. Never spend your magic stones on anything aside from monster box expansions and rare pulls during Godfests (not carnivals)
2. Don't play a Special dungeon unless you are hunting for something specific in them. Otherwise you're just wasting what little stamina you have
3. This isn't quite like Bejeweled; you can move your selected gem anywhere on the board for a limited time. Try to match as much of the field as you can if possible. Link five or more of the same colored gem to unleash an AOE attack
4. Go to your Monster Box and FAV everything you don't want to accidently fuse away
5. Back your data up regularly on iTunes/iCloud/whatever. The game has no login system; your account credentials are stored in the app itself

The Japanese phenomenon, now in English! Puzzle & Dragons combines Pokemon, Bejeweled, hardcore dungeon crawler RPGs, social gaming, and crack cocaine into one app. In Japan, it's remained at the top of the iTunes charts for over six months, currently has over 15 million downloads, and even got its own TV commercial.

Assemble a team out of hundreds of monsters to wipe out everything that moves in the dungeons! Power up your critters by feeding them other monsters in a bizarre cannibalistic ritual! Spend your paycheck buying IAP so you can evolve literal Egyptian Gods* into anime lolis! Wait a second...

Seriously though, while PAD may look like yet another shitty Japanese iOS freemium cash-in, the game is surprisngly deep. We're talking 30+ hours of content just to reach the real "meat" of the game, and GungHo will continue to add more new dungeons and monsters over time. You know how people describe the "Tetris Effect" where they'll see falling blocks everywhere? This game will do that to you too.

The strategies needed to beat later dungeons could fill pages and pages of text (and in fact has, if you look at the number of pages in this thread). You'll need proper hardcore RPG planning before going into a dungeon if you don't want to get slaughtered instantly, and once in battle use pro puzzle gem moving skills to execute your plans. And if you're into that shitton of numbers going up always thing, this game has that too.

Here's a video showing the kinds of broken stuff you'll be able to pull off at endgame:VS Hera Superplay

But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Let's start with the basics:Combo Tips

* the Egyptian God update hadn't hit Global as of the time of first posting, but they're in the game now!

Screenshots

Magic Stones, The God Decision, And You

GungHo's strategy for sucking your wallets dry consists of selling Magic Stones to you. Unless you hand over your credit card info, they only come from special events, logging in for X number of total days, or from clearing an entire set of stages in a dungeon. These rocks can be spent to do one a number of things:
1. Expanding your friends list (don't do this)
2. Refilling your stamina to full (don't do this unless you absolutely MUST get in one last event dungeon run)
3. Revive when you die in a dungeon (don't do this unless you got some amazing egg drop from a mob)
4. Add 5 more slots to your monster box (do this only if you don't want to get rid of anything else)
5. Spend 5 to use the rare egg gachapon (do this especially during a rare egg special event)

You might notice that last one is the only bullet point I don't recommend against. Why? Because the rare egg machine has a slim chance of giving you a 5* monster, or even a fabled ~* God Monster *~. In the long run, getting a chance at an awesome monster far outweighs the benefits of being able to play slightly longer for the day. That's why the first egg pull is so important: the tutorial is the only time when the game dumps five stones on you and gives you a free shot at obtaining God. Some people will advise you to make a new account and replay the tutorial until you get one of a certain few monsters.

Later in the game, especially after beating the Castle of StanSatan, having a God monster becomes less important than overall team composition. Also keep in mind that some of the monsters that pop out of the rare egg machine will be of little to no use to you in the beginning of the game. That being said, certain monsters, or their evolved/unevolved bretheren, are great cogs for a late-game team, and will make you a highly sought after friend by random explorers. The following highly subjective ~tier list~ highlights a few of these monsters as well as why you should keep them.

I'm a strong proponent for rerolling, but the rest of GAF disagrees with me, because pretty much everything that comes out of the rare machine will be useful in some type of team. Plus you'll always have more chances to get rainbow stones over the course of your Puzzle & Dragons career. The decision is up to you.

S Tier: Archangel Lucifer > Horus > Isis
Congrats! You've acquired the cream of the crop - a monster that will take you all the way to endgame and then some.

A Tier: Ares, Hermes, Artemis, Haku, "Dark" Metatron > Freyr, Idunn&Idunna, Freyja, Leilan, Karin
These monsters are solid leaders that will carry you through the first month or so of content without breaking a sweat, but may run into trouble tackling the most difficult content the game has to offer.

B Tier: Valkyrie, Meimei, Loki > Baal, Bastet, "Blue" Odin, Uriel, Gabriel, Michael, "Light" Metatron > Shiva, Parvati, Persephone, Thor
These monsters have flaws that make them unsuitable as leaders for all lategame content, or are useful only in specific endgame dungeons, but may serve as a good sub on a different team.

Savant Tier: Ra > Sakuya
Monsters that require prodigious puzzle skills or heavenly luck to be utilized to their full potential.

Rerolling an account
So how do you get a new account? There's no login system; the game simply stores your account information as app data, although actual data is serverside. This also makes it important to back up your data frequently. Anyways, there are two ways to get a new account for each smartphone platform. Choose whichever one works easiest for you.

iOS

Delete the app and redownload it, or

Jailbreak your phone or use a program like iFunBox and delete data048.bin. May be a little flaky. Remember to make a backup of your old files (data056.bin keeps your monster box, for future backup reference).

Android

Delete the app and redownload it, or

ICS or later: under Settings, go to the app and choose "Clear Data" (I don't actually have an Android so I don’t know the exact steps). Otherwise root your device and delete data048.bin

How to make sick combos

Unlike Bejeweled, once you choose a gem you can move it anywhere on the board for a short duration of time. Use this opportunity to rack up some huuuuge combos (check out the cheevos for the game; they expect you to do this). Here are some common ways to "solve" a pattern of three orbs:

While you can get away with playing earlier dungeons by ear, in the later stages you'll be required to whip out 4+ combos on command to get out of tight situations. You aren't forced to move the orb as soon as your turn begins; take some time to identify clusters of orbs that can be matched quickly and plan out your route to success.

Monster Feeding
Monsters level up and become stronger by feeding other monsters to them. You can feed up to five monsters in one shot, and the stronger the monster, the more EXP it gives. You might even get lucky and get a x1.5 or even a x2.0 EXP boost during feeding!
Tips to get the most out of monster feeding:
- Feeding a monster using monsters of the same element increases the EXP recieved by 50%!
- During your travels you may find eggs marked with a + sign. This means the monster has an increase in one of its HP/ATK/RCV stats. Feeding one monster to another transfers all of its stat boosts! (also if you get an Amaterasu feed as much +RCV as you can to her)
- Feeding a monster to another with the same Active Skill has a small chance of granting a Skill Up! This probability does not increase with the number of monsters fed, so feeding five Marine Goblins to a Siren will have the same chance of a Skill Up happening as if you fed it one

The Chinese wiki has EXP Charts showing how much experience monsters need to level up (now also in English thanks to Jinko). I recommend attempting to feed a monster to max level as quickly as possible. Why? The amount of money you pay for a fusion scales with the base monster's current level. So you could either feed a monster to max level by feeding it five monsters one by one, which would be hella expensive, or from LV1 with all five of them at the same time, which would cost just cost 500 gold.

What exactly should you feed to a monster to minimize the money you need to spend? As it turns out, certain monsters give more EXP than others. At low levels, regular dungeon fodder will be adequate for leveling up. After about LV10, you should instead fuse those feeders to Carbuncles, then feed the Carbuncles to whatever you actually want to raise. You'll also occasionally come across Metal Dragons during the course of your travels, and King Metal Dragons will give a whopping 100k EXP to a monster of the same element!

Later in the game, you'll start finding "Evolve Material" called Pengdras, which at LV10 give 9000 EXP to a monster of the same element, or after evolving a cool 45000 EXP. Since feeding gets more expensive as the monster rises in level, using Metal Dragons or Pengdras to level up your monsters becomes the recommended way to go.

Monster Evolution

Many monsters have the ability to undergo evolution once they've reached max level. In exchange for some money, a few monsters, and a reset to Level 1, you get a sicker lookin dragon, better base stats, and even possibly new skills. You can check what monsters can evolve and what's necessary for evolution from the Evolve Fusion menu. Monsters which can evolve and have the required materials are completely displayed, monsters which can evolve but are missing the required materials are slightly transparent, and monsters that can't evolve at all are almost completely transparent.

The following are used to evolve Dragon-type monsters and are all found in the Thursday Dungeon, but can be found less reliably in other locations:
Dragon Seed: Departure Tower
Dragon Plant: Tower of Trials
Dragon Flower: Tower of Giants
Dragon Fruit: Thursday Dungeon only!

Special Dungeons
You may have noticed a tab in the list of dungeons labeled "Special" which features a bunch of stamina-intensive dungeons. These dungeons contain very specialized mobs, such as large quantities of Evolution Materials or Metal Dragons, or certain gimmicks, like missing light/dark gems or recovery gems. You should only enter these dungeons if you have a very specific need to do so. If you're wondering if you might be able to survive a given special dungeon, some of them are labeled with difficulty levels that correspond roughly to the following:
Novice: 1-2* normal dungeons
Adept: 2-3* normal dungeons
Expert: post-Castle of Satan
Master: you are already dead

Additionally, some dungeons always appear on certain days of the week. Here's what they're good for farming:
Monday: no dungeon
Tuesday: Keepers
Wednesday: Masks
Thursday: Dragon Seed/Plant/Flower/Fruit
Friday: Lits and Dublits
Weekends: Cold hard cash. Tower of Giants - Dragons of the Tower also goes to half stamina and has one of the best EXP:stamina ratios in the game

The Facebook group's FAQ explains Metal Dragons and their Special Dungeon schedule in far greater detail than I'm willing to summarize, so I'm just going to link to it from here.

Team Building 101

So you're sitting there getting blown up by a dumb Flammie in one of the early dungeons and you're like "what the hell?" Well, with one look at your team roster, no wonder you're getting slammed! Early on, it's difficult to scrounge up a skeleton crew much less a super kickass army, but I did well cobbling the following team together:
Your starter dragon. There's a reason why they gave him to you for free, you know! Its leader skill also incentivizes you adding monsters of the same element to your team, so do that.
Your rare pull. Unless you got a super rare one and your team points are too low to equip it lol
An attack/technique monster: Gotta get that damage in! Try to have it match the element of your leader.
A healer. If you didn't get one of the five Healer girls from the rare machine, they also drop rarely as the bosses of some of the early dungeons. The 2* form of Carbuncles will also do in a pinch.
A slime/goblin. All of them have orb changing skills when evolved to 2*, and like Carbuncles, require relatively easy to acquire materials to evolve.

If you get something better out of the Pal or Rare machine, obviously swap those in where appropriate. Once you reach harder dungeons, you'll need to start specializing to deal with the specific hazards within. What strategy you want to prepare for those depends both on what monsters you currently own and what you're willing to put up with to fill holes in your team. Post your troubles in the thread and we'll try to help you out.

By adding a player to your friends list, not only do you get to add their leader to your party, but you also get the benefit of their leader skill! Fire dungeon doing too much damage to you? Bring a leader that cuts fire damage received by half! Love big numbers? Pair a friend's 2x watter attack with your own and do four times as much damage! You also get points to spend on the Pal Egg Machine, which can occasionally spit out some cool monsters.

GAF Friends Army
Venture forth, brave explorer, and team up with other GAF members! Add @GAF to the end of your nickname so fellow GAFers can find you out on the field:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...JWG9Tb0E#gid=3
You may have to go back to the title screen/restart the app for requests to appear.

LV20 Gift
When you reach level 20, the game gives you the opportunity to share a gift with somebody on your friendslist. Each gift gives both the sender and the recipient an opportunity to get another one of the three starter dragons, or the light/dark variant. By swapping gifts with someone else you get two tries at getting the light and dark ones! This is a one-time deal, so instead of wasting it on some random, post your friendcode up in this thread and swap with a GAFer! Again, if you don't receive the present immediately, go back to the title screen or restart the app.

Game rocks but I don't know if I should start over on my phone at level 16 with a Neptune and a Verche or just keep going with what I have now. I have really been having fun so far and feel like I made a lot of progress, but I also accidentally used my starting dragon guy as power up material.

Been playing this game for the past week two weeks, currently rank 24.

It's not an actual paywall per se, but most/all of the endgame dungeons pretty much require you to load your team up with 5/6* rares with max skill LV. So you can either pray to the god of gambling your gachapon pulls are amazing with the stones the game gives you or pay up for more chances.

Like the Hera dungeon in the superplay video? Consider that she attacks for 12354 damage on a 1 turn clock and has 2.5mil HP. Try to figure out how to beat that, much less the preceding dungeons, with the tools the game gives you normally.

When I say paywall I mean the part where the game becomes a grindfest unless you start paying money.

Ffff... is that all?

You're talking to someone who enjoys maxing out all the levels on all the materia he's collected in FF7, before defeating the final boss. :P

Also, question for anyone: Is it better to fuse together the fodder monsters together then fuse them to your good monsters, or just skip fusing them together, and just fuse them to the good monster when you can?

IE, if I have five monster (lets say 3 slimes and 2 goblins), and my good monster (lets say a dragon), is it better to fuse those five monsters together first, or just skip that part, and just fuse them to the dragon directly (but all in one go). I know it costs more money the more monsters you use in the fusion process, and I know the cost also scales to the level of the monster, but was wondering if you get more XP if you did it a certain way.

When I say paywall I mean the part where the game becomes a grindfest unless you start paying money.

Yeah, I'm currently a little stuck - 'powering-up' my monsters is now costing a whole heap of coins, and coins are a little hard to come by in the lowly dungeons I'm having to grind - the 'special' dungeons seem to be a little beyond the powers of my lowly bunch for now.

A little lost with what/who to prioritise for power-ups, and ultimately evolutions, so thanks for the guides, guys. Stumbled into this blindly, not aware of the dice roll for the initial monster (amongst everything else), so despite now being rank 14, I may be better off starting over, perhaps.

You're talking to someone who enjoys maxing out all the levels on all the materia he's collected in FF7, before defeating the final boss. :P

Also, question for anyone: Is it better to fuse together the fodder monsters together then fuse them to your good monsters, or just skip fusing them together, and just fuse them to the good monster when you can?

IE, if I have five monster (lets say 3 slimes and 2 goblins), and my good monster (lets say a dragon), is it better to fuse those five monsters together first, or just skip that part, and just fuse them to the dragon directly (but all in one go). I know it costs more money the more monsters you use in the fusion process, and I know the cost also scales to the level of the monster, but was wondering if you get more XP if you did it a certain way.

There's definitely a certain way to go about it, and I don't really touch on it that much in the OP because I don't quite understand the specifics myself. Certain monsters will give you more EXP than others.

The Chinese/Japanese wikis have exact pedigrees for raising something with just the right amount of EXP to hit max level, but no English equivalent as far as I'm aware. The poor man's version is basically:
1. Feed low-leveled shit to Carbuncles, feed Carbuncles to low-level shit you want to raise
2. King Metal Dragons give 75000+ exp when fed, the lower Metal Dragons give progressively less
3. The evolved versions of the Pengdra give 45k exp when fed to a same-color monster, and require a Dragon Plant and two of the Metal Dragons of the same color to evolve.

Nice to finally see an explanation and discussion for this game. I've been stumbling blindly through having no real sense of what to do. Now I'm level 28 with a 3 star leader and thinking I might want to reroll. I used my magic stones for revival... Mind blown at the advanced techniques as I have been playing it like bejeweled all along. I have a pretty good friend's list though. Should I reroll?

Nice to finally see an explanation and discussion for this game. I've been stumbling blindly through having no real sense of what to do. Now I'm level 28 with a 3 star leader and thinking I might want to reroll. I used my magic stones for revival... Mind blown at the advanced techniques as I have been playing it like bejeweled all along. I have a pretty good friend's list though. Should I reroll?

I saw that the game is F2P. How are the micro transactions implemented?

Pay money to get those fabled Magic Stones, which can be used to unlock more boxes for Monsters, continue a dungeon, refill Stamina, or the only use that really matters, spend 5 stones to roll for a 3 star (or better) monster.

But as the OP says, you can also get those stones the old fashioned way too. So essentially, in this game, paying cold hard cash just makes grinding in the game easier/faster.

I saw that the game is F2P. How are the micro transactions implemented?

Read the OP. Magic stones.

Man I'm just so conflicted. Me feeling like I've been screwing up after investing all this time just made me feel like crap. Think I'm gonna reroll cause my last gacha I got a 4 star that was a completely different color than what I needed.

Some of you who've played Monster Hunter might know of the Desire Sensor mechanic, where as soon as you need an item to upgrade your armor the game just stops giving it to you, even if it's supposed to be a relatively common drop.

Well P&D has it too, the difference being the game actually drinks in your sorrow and enjoys watching you suffer and despair. Spent three days trying to hunt down the four demon masks I needed to evolve my Vampire. Asides from not getting an egg from the Demon Mask, these were the most common scenarios:
1. Egg drops from the first forgettable minion. I spend the next minute staring at the egg while I chip away at the Demon Mask's high defense.
2. I get a drop from the Demon Mask. It's a treasure box.
3. I add more High Metal Dragon eggs, normally rare, to my growing collection instead.

I downloaded it like over a week ago and got really addicted to it, playing it every single day for quite some time, but I hit level 23 2 days ago and I think I'm done with it. The uncontrollable rush to play it several times a day is gone, and I used several of my stones for revival or for expanding my box. Also, some of my rare monsters take a lot of time and money to level up which pisses me off a bit. I still think it's a good game, though, but everyone must reroll (which I didn't) and take good care of their stones.

I have a Amaterasu and I had fed her a king metal dragon the other day on accident. She leveled like 18 times. I've only fed her one +RCV, did I mess anything up with the King metal deal?

You're still good, unless that KMD had +HP or +ATK lol

Originally Posted by BigNastyCurve

Ok so after a few attempts I got Fafnir. 5 star...good? How do I complement him? Total newb here.

Also what are "Pal eggs"?

Fafnir should get you through the early game, but at endgame you'll be looking to replace him with something with better abilities. 2x Earth attack will be useful on certain teams. Low team cost is also a boon early on.

Pal eggs you get by accruing Pal points, which you earn every time you take a new explorer or friend into a dungeon with you each day, and whenever somebody takes your leader with them. One of the reasons why keeping a large friends list is good.

Game rocks but I don't know if I should start over on my phone at level 16 with a Neptune and a Verche or just keep going with what I have now. I have really been having fun so far and feel like I made a lot of progress, but I also accidentally used my starting dragon guy as power up material.

I would hang on to Neptune. The poison ability is extremely useful, especially in boss battles where you are just working on staying alive.

To those hitting a wall, I've found the grindy bits are mostly the tower fights which seperate a new dungeon rotation based on attributes.

Couple of simple things can greatly reduce the grinding

Once you get to Sea Cave Mercury you can get a mermaid drop. Lather rinse repeat in these dungeons until you get the drop, I found mine in Voice of the Siren after two or three runs.

Level, evolve and use your mermaid/siren as leader while using a friend that reduces the damage by half of the primary attribute of the dungeon you are in. At lower levels damage is reduced slightly but try and find meteor dragon, toyceratops or megladon friends. The dark/light damage reduction mobs are bit more difficult to come by.

edit: and do nothing on weekends but money dungeons, yea, it eats stamina up but you can roll out of the weekend with 200k - 300k.

I have a feeling theres going to be a Rare Egg machine bonus for tomorrow. On Christmas Eve, they had a little event for the Pal Egg Machine and the following day on Christmas, they had 3x the chance for rares for the Rare Egg machine. They're doing something for the Pal Egg machine right now so it might be a safe bet to assume theres something going on tomorrow.

I'm at Rank 86 now and I'm using most of my magic stones on upgrading my box (at about 80 slots now but I'm mostly stockpiling rare evolution materials). There seems to be a huge reliance on getting rare drops at the start but I don't think its necessary as I didn't even start with a good monster. I got a few God type monsters from the machine but I don't use them nearly as much as my main monsters which all came from dungeons. Part of the reason is because the extremely rare monsters require a lot of resources to level up. They usually require about 4 million exp to max out while your starters only need 1.5 million. In the end, the starter stats aren't that far behind.

In reference to my earlier question about what the best way to deal with fusing fodder monsters.

It appears that doing it the long way gets you more XP.

I had three monsters, a goblin, and two carbuncles. Individually, when trying to fuse them to a dragon, they all had the same XP, 225 XP.
If you fused them the long way (putting each one in its own slot for fusion), that's 225 x 3, or 675 XP.
If you fused them together first, THEN fused them to your main monster, it was something like 450 XP (sorry, while I paid attention to the first part, wasnt paying attention to the second).

Looks like doing the long way is better, but the drawback is the cost (more expensive to fuse three monsters instead of just one).

EDIT: And now that I think of it, if you did opt for the 2nd method, you still have to pay for the cost of fusing the fodders together first. Now I wonder if overall cost of using the 2nd method might actually make it more expensive. I'll get back to you guys on that one...

In reference to my earlier question about what the best way to deal with fusing fodder monsters.

It appears that doing it the long way gets you more XP.

I had three monsters, a goblin, and two carbuncles. Individually, when trying to fuse them to a dragon, they all had the same XP, 225 XP.
If you fused them the long way (putting each one in its own slot for fusion), that's 225 x 3, or 675 XP.
If you fused them together first, THEN fused them to your main monster, it was something like 450 XP (sorry, while I paid attention to the first part, wasnt paying attention to the second).

Looks like doing the long way is better, but the drawback is the cost (more expensive to fuse three monsters instead of just one).

It depends on the monster really. With fodder monster, its probably best to just fuse them directly to your main. You'll eventually come across these penguin looking guys and its definitely better to max them out before you fuse. These penguins only require about 2-3000 exp to max out but they grant 6000 exp. In addition, if you have the required evolution materials, they'll evolve to something that will give 30000 I believe.

So, after reading this OT, I decided to reroll since I was still in the early stages of the game (Volcano dungeon, rank 10) and noticed that dungeons became a bit harder already.
Although about 8 rerolls further, I'm still stuck with tops a 4* creature (Thanatos twice). I'll give it a go tomorrow because I'm kind of tired of doing the tutorial OVER and OVER again.

In any case, in the beginning I thought "meh, another Bejeweled clone", now it's a game I'm really starting to like since it has some depth to it.

Also, what do you GAFers do with multiple devices? Two different IDs (considering there's no cloud save).

Breakers features farmable golems, great for feeding to 50% damage reduction monsters for skill level up. The Novice difficulty might be easy enough for first-time players, but that 15 stamina cost will burn a hole in your pocket.

Supposedly there's also going to be a boosted chance for Norse (terrible) and Greek gods today, but I haven't seen any official notification about it.

I would hang on to Neptune. The poison ability is extremely useful, especially in boss battles where you are just working on staying alive.

To those hitting a wall, I've found the grindy bits are mostly the tower fights which seperate a new dungeon rotation based on attributes.

Couple of simple things can greatly reduce the grinding

Once you get to Sea Cave Mercury you can get a mermaid drop. Lather rinse repeat in these dungeons until you get the drop, I found mine in Voice of the Siren after two or three runs.

Level, evolve and use your mermaid/siren as leader while using a friend that reduces the damage by half of the primary attribute of the dungeon you are in. At lower levels damage is reduced slightly but try and find meteor dragon, toyceratops or megladon friends. The dark/light damage reduction mobs are bit more difficult to come by.

edit: and do nothing on weekends but money dungeons, yea, it eats stamina up but you can roll out of the weekend with 200k - 300k.